Justin Vernon: Last News

Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon is launching his own monthly radio show – Song Chest Radio Hour will share its first edition this weekend.The first edition of Song Chest Radio Hour will air on the station on Sunday night (September 4) at 5pm CT (11pm BST), and will be available to listen to via Radio Milwaukee’s website and app.In a statement on the band’s Twitter account, the show – which will air on Radio Milwaukee – promises “to try and spread some love, joy, and acceptance through playing some songs you love and enjoy”.Find out all the details on Song Chest Radio Hour below.Tune in for the first episode this Sun 9/4/22 @ 5pm CT on @RadioMilwaukee; listen live or stream via the station’s app/website https://t.co/bpf5NMdiNa. Archived recordings available on MixCloud.

Bon Iver have announced an Australian leg for their current world tour, making up for a cancelled run of dates from last year.The Justin Vernon-fronted act were initially scheduled to tour Australia in June of 2020; however, that run was pushed back by nine months when the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold. The tour was then due to start in March 2021 – with Gordi and Stella Donnelly confirmed as support acts – but it was ultimately cancelled in November 2020 with the band “look[ing] forward to safer days ahead”.Today (August 24), six Australian dates have been confirmed for the first quarter of 2023.

The National have shared further details of their new single, ‘Weird Goodbyes’, featuring Bon Iver.Pictures of posters advertising the new song began to circulate online, with the band later confirming their legitimacy by changing their cover photos on social media to include the same artwork.Now The National have taken to Instagram to provide more information to fans, as well as a release date.“Last spring, the band reconvened at Long Pond to begin writing and recording new music that we’ve been working on ever since,” the statement reads.“‘Weird Goodbyes’ featuring Bon Iver felt like the right track to share first and is one of a handful of new songs we’ve been performing on tour this summer. We’re so grateful to our friend Justin Vernon for joining us on this song.”The post also revealed that the single will be released worldwide at 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm UK on Monday, August 22.

The National appear to be on the precipice of a new single release, as posters for a song titled ‘Weird Goodbyes’ (featuring Bon Iver) have begun to circulate.The band have been performing ‘Weird Goodbyes’ live, sans the guest spot from Bon Iver – which, presumably, will comprise some of its lyrics being sung by Justin Vernon – since late May. They played it for the first time in Pamplona, Spain on May 28 – the first National show to go down in three years – where it was billed on the setlist as ‘Bathwater (Mount Auburn)’. It’s been performed at seven show since, including this week’s headliner in Dillon, Colorado and at the Outlandia festival on Friday (August 12).

Bon Iver‘s premium sound system providers, L-Acoustics, have spoken to NME about the future of live sound and how they worked with Justin Vernon to design an immersive experience for fans.Before the recent show at New York City’s Forrest Hills stadium as part of the ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’ 10-year anniversary tour, Vernon first tapped L-Acoustics in 2018 to help create a panoramic soundscape of high-resolution audio for a gig at California’s Santa Barbara Bowl.Since then, the band have continued to work with the company – using their L-ISA Hyperreal sound technology – to create a deeper, direct auditory connection with fans.“It’s the 10 year anniversary of our album release, ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’, but it’s also a return after quarantine and COVID lockdown,” Vernon said of focusing on sound on their current tour. “We’ve gotten to be on the ground floor of something new,” he added, noting that “it’s not just two stacks of speakers in a room anymore.”The first time the Wisconsin indie band played their nuanced tracks via the L-ISA high-resolution speaker software, their engineer came up to Vernon after the performance and told him, “That’s the best show you’ve ever played, and it has a lot to do with that sound system.”“Overall, if we were to prioritise what we’re bringing to people out there [it’s] what goes in their ears,” the Bon Iver bandleader said of the importance of their sound quality.

The Cure, Bon Iver, Hot Chip and Duran Duran have paid tribute to Dave Smith, the founder of Sequential Synth and MIDI Pioneer, following his death aged 72.A post on the Sequential website confirmed the news. “It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that Dave Smith has died. We’re heartbroken, but take some small solace in knowing he was on the road doing what he loved best in the company of family, friends, and artists,” said the announcement.Smith, also known as the king of MIDI, invented a range of synths that were used by electronic artists throughout the ‘80s as well as by Radiohead on their experimental ‘Kid A’.Taking to Twitter, The Cure’s Roger O’Donnell wrote: So sad to hear of Dave Smith’s death.

Bartees Strange has announced that his second album, ‘Farm To Table’, will arrive in June, sharing new single ‘Cosigns’ along with the news.Set to arrive on June 17, the follow-up to 2020 debut ‘Live Forever’ was previewed last month with lead single ‘Heavy Heart’. That song’s release came with the news that Strange had signed to his “dream label”, 4AD, who will release ‘Farm To Table’.‘Cosigns’ is a characteristically diverse cut from Strange, melding trappy, auto-tuned verses that shout out Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, Courtney Barnett and Justin Vernon, with blistering, anthemic alt-rock refrains.

Phoebe Bridgers has written a heartfelt essay for the 10th anniversary edition of Bon Iver‘s second album, ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’.Justin Vernon’s critically acclaimed LP, which featured the singles ‘Calgary’, ‘Holocene’, ‘Towers’ and ‘Beth/Rest’, was released in June 2011.To celebrate the anniversary, an expanded vinyl reissue of ‘Bon Iver, Bon Iver’ has now been released featuring five songs from Vernon and S. Carey’s AIR Studios session, which have never previously been released physically or through DSPs – you can buy the album here.The new version also features packaging which includes “a blind embossed version of the original cover art, and an intimate personal essay from long-time fan Phoebe Bridgers”.You can read Bridgers’ personal essay below:“You had such a big crush on that girl from camp you couldn’t even look at her,” she wrote. “But you knew a song she didn’t, so when she sat next to you on the bus you did something you would eventually learn to hate: the thing where you play a song for someone while staring at them, insisting with your eyes that they connect with it deeply and upon first listen.“Men would later do this to you with The Hold Steady and Smog and Bright Eyes and Feist and Elliott Smith.

DEALSRound Hill Music has acquired various royalty and remuneration rights linked to the songs and recordings of original Scorpions drummer Herman Rarebell. “The Scorpions are a truly legendary band with a catalogue of truly iconic music that helped define the heavy metal genre”, says Round Hill CEO Josh Gruss.

Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and Ethan Gruska have long admired each other's work, and they'd planned on capitalizing on their long-distance friendship just as the pandemic hit. “Around March 10th of 2020 Justin was supposed to come to L.A. and we were going to spend a few days making some stuff," Gruska remembers.

Bon Iver and Ethan Gruska – best known for his production work with Phoebe Bridgers – have shared a new joint single, ‘So Unimportant’.The track arrives as part of the singles series from Sylvan Esso’s Psychic Hotline label.Speaking of the collaboration’s genesis, Justin Vernon said: “My dear friend and great drummer, JT Bates, showed me the music of Ethan Gruska a number of years ago. It’s not often that something IMMEDIATELY grasps you where you stand like his music did. It only happens a few times in one’s life.“Ethan’s musicality and touch has magic in it.

Bon Iver have announced a series of US shows across the first half of 2022.The tour will see the band head across Texas, New York, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania and a number of other US states between March and June. The US dates will precede Bon Iver’s rescheduled UK and European tour dates in October and November.The shows will be supported by either Dijon or Bonny Light Horseman.

Big Red Machine‘s Aaron Dessner has discussed ‘Hutch’, a new song he wrote about the late Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison.The track appears on ‘How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?’, the recent second album by Dessner and Justin Vernon‘s band, and was written by Dessner for Hutchison, who died by suicide in 2018.“I wrote the music not long after Scott passed away and I was, like everyone, so incredibly sad,” Dessner told NME in a new interview.“I’ve lost other friends in the same way and every time you just wonder what you could’ve done differently. Could you have been more present, or checked in more?”He added: “I spoke to him two weeks before that and he was actually encouraging me to sing.

It’s an exciting day for Taylor Swift fans.

We have new music from Taylor Swift!

Big Red Machine and Taylor Swift have shared new song "Renegade." Big Red Machine is the collaborative project of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner of The National. Both artists contributed to Swift's 2020 album folklore.

The National‘s Aaron Dessner has teased the second of two collaborations with Taylor Swift on his new album with Big Red Machine, calling it “really, really stunning”.This morning (June 2), Dessner and Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon – aka Big Red Machine – shared new Swift-featuring single ‘Renegade’, the third preview of the band’s upcoming second album ‘How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?’.Now, in a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, Dessner has looked forward to ‘Birch’, the other song with Swift yet to be released.“There’s another song called “Birch” that’s really, really stunning that she sings and is a big part of with Justin,” Dessner told Lowe.

Taylor Swift took to Instagram to release her new collab Renegade along with Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon. The latest single is a new track that is a part of Vernon and Dessner's Big Red Machine album.

There’s new Taylor Swift music out tonight!

The full list of this week's key New Music Friday releases appears at the bottom of the page, but first, some highlights...